


Letting Go

by eternaleponine



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-15
Updated: 2011-05-15
Packaged: 2017-10-19 10:39:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/199925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternaleponine/pseuds/eternaleponine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takes place after the episode No Exit.  Lee steals a chance to say goodbye to the man that he once cared for in secret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Letting Go

**Author's Note:**

> For the events leading up to this point, read Mistakes We Knew We Were Making.

Kara is with him every minute she can be, so it's a few days before I see him at all. I won't interrupt what time they have left, although all reports are that he's essentially brain-dead, if a Cylon, a machine, ever can be. Or maybe I'm just making excuses.

I wait until she leaves, called away to do something she can't ignore or brush off. I don't know what, and I don't care. It buys me a few minutes, at least, to say what I have to say.

When it ended, it was without a word or even a look. Kara came back and we were over. We both knew it; there was no need for discussion. He was no longer a husband without a wife. I was no longer the grieving friend. We would both accept her back, regardless of all of the unanswered questions around her return. For us, that fact that she was alive, the fact that a void we had both been living around had been filled again, was enough. I would learn to live with the new wound that had been torn in my heart. What choice did I have?

I sit in the chair beside his bed and reach for his hand. He is motionless, not responding to anything around him. No matter how long I wait for him to squeeze my fingers back, he won't. Sam Anders isn't there anymore. He doesn't even really look like himself with all of his hair gone. What lies in front of me is the shell of the man I knew, a machine that keeps working, but no soul to make it human anymore. And he was human. Cylon or not, he was more human than a lot of us.

"Hey Sam," I say softly. There's no reason to believe he can hear me, but I hope that somehow he knows I'm there. "I'm sorry I didn't come sooner." While you were awake and talking. While you could have responded. But he had been surrounded all the time, by Kara and the others from the Final Five, and how could I have explained a visit?

I watch his face, hoping for a reaction, a flicker of something, but his expression remains blank, vacant. I look away, because it hurts to see him like this. I stare at his hand instead, but that isn't any better, when his fingers are still and useless.

Finally I force myself to look back at his face. It's time to say goodbye.

"You asked me once, 'What is this?' and I didn't answer. Truth is, I didn't know how to define it, or even whether we should or could. But I know now, Sam."

I take a deep breath and it comes out shaky. "It was good, Sam. That's what it was. It was good."

I lift his hand and kiss the back of it, then let it, and him, go.


End file.
